Screening of various diesel particulate matter samples from various commodity mines

Abstract

This paper presents qualitative analysis results of diesel particulate matter (DPM) from various mining commodities in South Africa. The objective of this work was to determine the concentrations of elements in DPM samples. For this screening exercise, inductively coupled plasma (ICP) spectrometry was used to identify trace elements and other metal elements in the DPM samples. Most of the trace elements did not give a sufficient instrument response to warrant further evaluation. However, the concentrations of calcium (Ca), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), potassium (K), magnesium (Mg), sodium (Na), and chromium (Cr) for most samples were detectable.